SharpEmu PS5 Emulator Reaches 60 FPS in Six Games, but PC Compatibility Remains Early

What SharpEmu announced​

SharpEmu developer CursedIfElse posted the news on X with the new build. He wrote that "out of 55 tested games, 12 can now reach in-game, and 6 of them are fully playable at 60 FPS."

The six titles rated playable at 60 FPS are:

• Dreaming Sarah
• Void Terrarium (some coverage lists it simply as "Terrarium")
• New Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja
• Tetris Forever
• Hoa
• Tomb Raider IV–VI Remastered

The build is SharpEmu v0.0.4-release.2. According to VideoCardz, it includes Vulkan updates, more SPIR-V shader translator instructions, CPU fixes and additional Vulkan extension support. DSOGaming adds that the release also fixes an AMD file cache issue and improves SPIR-V shader handling. The developers haven't said which of these changes got the six games to 60 FPS. Treat the list as the contents of the release, not an explanation of the results.

Section summary: Of 55 games tested, 12 reach gameplay and six are rated playable at 60 FPS, all on v0.0.4-release.2 from September 25.

"Playable" has a specific meaning here​

"Playable" is a label in the project's compatibility list. It doesn't mean anyone has finished these games on the emulator. The developer spelled out the terms: none of these games has been tested from start to finish yet, but titles carrying the playable rating currently run without major problems, although some may still have minor graphical or audio issues.

DSOGaming put it more bluntly. It said the rating does not mean that these games can be played from start to finish, and some of them may have crashing issues at later stages.

So a game hitting 60 FPS in its opening areas is real progress. It doesn't promise a full playthrough, stable frame times everywhere, or clean audio.

The counts are also a snapshot. The listed titles have changed between builds, and a FandomWire headline published two days later already says seven games. When you see a number, check which build and date it comes from.

Why these games worked first​

None of the six is a heavy 3D showcase. DSOGaming noted that none of these games are very complex. The project's own history explains why.

In an August 15 progress post, SharpEmu said its recent focus had been:

• Removing performance bottlenecks
• Improving memory management
• Refining pipeline handling for 2D software rendering

That same post said Tetris Forever held a steady 60 FPS, and it called 3D rendering and graphics-pipeline execution the "next big challenge." The team picked Astro's Playroom as its main 3D test game.

Some of the six had shown promise well before this release. VideoCardz reports that Dreaming Sarah was one of the first games marked playable, while Tetris Forever was later demonstrated running at around 60 FPS. SharpEmu's blog also reported Hoa as fully playable in a September 3 development update.

Big 3D games are much further behind. Notebookcheck writes that more demanding 3D titles such as Demon's Souls, Astro Bot and Grand Theft Auto V remain far from playable, still stuck at much earlier stages of compatibility. VGTimes offers a small bright spot: Demon's Souls can already render its interface, equipment menu and 3D character creator. A character creator is a long way from a boss fight, though.

Section summary: The early wins are lightweight or 2D-heavy games, which matches where the project has spent its effort. Demanding 3D PS5 games are still at the menu or early-gameplay stage.

The x86 advantage, and why it isn't enough​

The PS5 uses an AMD Zen 2 CPU, which runs the same x86-64 instruction set as a typical Windows PC. Tom's Hardware notes that this lets SharpEmu run the console's CPU code natively instead of translating it from a foreign instruction set. That's a big advantage over, say, PS3 emulation, where the Cell processor has to be translated.

Sharing a CPU instruction set doesn't make the console easy to emulate. An emulator still has to recreate:

• The PS5's system software and kernel functions
• Its memory behavior
• The GPU command stream and shaders, translated into something Vulkan understands on PC (that's the job of the SPIR-V shader translator mentioned in the release)
• Audio and other platform services

Tom's Hardware describes SharpEmu's current work as loading a game's eboot.bin executable and required system modules, partly handling kernel functions, and processing shaders, resources and AGC graphics submissions. That's the project's own description, and it shows how much depends on graphics translation. The 2D-versus-3D gap in the compatibility list follows from that.

What Windows users should know​

SharpEmu's GitHub repository describes it as an experimental PS5 emulator developed from scratch in C#, with the current focus on accuracy and infrastructure setup rather than game-specific compatibility. Builds are available for Windows, Linux and macOS. Tom's Hardware says it uses Vulkan for graphics, with MoltenVK on Mac.

If you plan to try it:

1. Expect little to work. DSOGaming warns that SharpEmu is still an experimental project, so crashes and broken games can still happen.
2. Don't shop for hardware around it. According to Kantan.News, SharpEmu has not yet announced an official minimum hardware requirement for PC systems.
3. Keep your GPU driver current with working Vulkan support. The emulator's graphics path is built on Vulkan, and this release added support for more Vulkan extensions. That advice is general emulator practice, not a documented SharpEmu requirement.
4. Check the build number on every compatibility report. Results change from build to build, and a report from an older version may not match what you see.
5. Understand what's included. The developers say the project does not contain any copyrighted system firmware, game data or proprietary PlayStation assets. It's a research and education project, and you provide any software yourself. How you get that software is your responsibility. This article isn't legal advice.

The repository also makes clear that SharpEmu is PS5-only. Its goal is not to emulate PS4 games, as there is already an excellent emulator dedicated to that platform: ShadPS4.

SharpEmu isn't the only PS5 project​

Other projects are working on the same problem. DSOGaming argues that KyTyPS5 has made huge progress and is now well ahead of SharpEmu. FandomWire points to a different approach: AnyPS5 is converting console executables to run natively on Windows and Linux instead of using a conventional emulator. All of these are early-stage projects, and none has shown broad, reliable compatibility.

For context, ShadPS4, the PS4 emulator SharpEmu recommends, took years to reach large compatibility numbers. As of November 2025, 317 titles are listed by shadPS4 as being "in game", while 179 titles are listed as being "playable". PS5 emulation is at a much earlier point on that path.

Analysis: real progress, but only for a handful of games​

The PS5 emulation scene tends toward hype, and a headline like "six PS5 games at 60 FPS" invites it. Here's what's actually supported:

• Accurate: A public, open-source emulator runs some real PS5 releases at full frame rate on PC.
• Accurate: v0.0.4-release.2 brought shader-translation, Vulkan and CPU changes.
• Not established: That any of the six can be finished, that 60 FPS holds throughout, or that the gains carry over to demanding 3D games.

Scale matters too. VGTimes notes that the compatibility database tracks 9,092 PS5 games, but only 55 have been tested so far. Six playable games out of more than 9,000 is a tiny fraction of the library. Notebookcheck summed it up: these are incremental gains rather than a leap in overall compatibility.

The better measure is the trend. Over a few months, SharpEmu went from games that only booted, to a single steady 60 FPS result in Tetris Forever, to six titles rated playable. If the project's move into 3D rendering pays off, the next milestones will involve much bigger games. Until then, this is a promising research project, not a replacement for a PS5.

Bottom line: SharpEmu v0.0.4-release.2 is a real milestone for PS5 emulation on Windows. It covers six mostly lightweight games, none of which has been verified from start to finish.